Trauma
by green eyed typhoon
Summary: A quick one-shot based on a prompt to write a short 1,000 words or less on the theme of trauma. A look at an Arizona just after her injury having gotten it under different circumstances than in the show. Just a quick little exercise I dug up, hope you enjoy it!


Beep... Beep… Beep… Beep…

I awoke violently as had become the norm. A flash of something shot through me. Fear, pain, a metallic scent… It took me a while to calm down as the memories came flooding in, relentless in their intensity. Bombarding me with images I'd gladly forget.

All I could here was the pounding in my ears and my ragged breathing, my vision spotting at the edges from the stress affecting my current condition. Idly I noticed the beeping, which I identified was coming from a heart monitor, changed to reflect my awakened, and panicked status.

Why? Why did that have to be real? More importantly, why did I have to wake up?

The sound of the glass door sliding open interrupted my melancholic musings. I looked at the nurse as she came in; ignoring her meaningless small talk as she checked various readings that I was certain I knew more about than her. Well they say doctors make the worst patients for a reason I supposed.

Eyeing her I could focus on nothing of her aside from her wide plastic smile, it couldn't be more obvious that she'd rather be elsewhere. I internally contemplated informing her that it took 42 of her body's muscles to maintain that artificial emotion of hers and that there were far easier ways to express how she really felt, like a middle finger for example.

Bitch.

Like I was ecstatic to be here, this is why I preferred children. They tended to be genuine.

The door reopening stalled my petty musings as the doctor came in. Dressed in a starch white lab coat that doctors always seemed so fond of, an air of both importance and impatience. He busily made his way to me and started doing important doctorly things with a halfhearted hello. I liked him more than the nurse already. Ignoring him as he put those seven years of school and thousands in student loans to work I finally did what I'd been trying to avoid with my distracting thoughts.

I looked down at my body.

Despite knowing what to expect I couldn't stop the flinch as I took it all in. Edges of scars peeked out from the bandages; I was a molted mix of yellow, green, and purple on almost all areas of visible skin. The flashes came again more vividly than before as I relived each moment, the heat of the sun, sand in my mouth, red hot shrapnel tearing through my skin with terrifying ease.

Well, there goes my modeling career I guess.

Taking a deep breath I closed my eyes and tried to gather my courage as I looked at the the area of my body that I'd intentionally avoided. Ignoring the doctor's mutterings and the nurses pitying gaze I bent forward to shift the hospital gown aside, hissing sharply as I pulled on various stitches and strained various bruises I did my best to contain myself.

I stared at my right leg dispassionately, idly wondering if this was what an out of body experience felt like. Was I so horrified by the sight of it and the implications it brought that I distanced myself from my emotions and tried to process the sight before me? The horror would come later I knew, but I couldn't seem to care at the moment.

The entire limb was swollen to almost twice its size, the various shade greens, blues, purples, and blacks reflected the harsh fluorescent light giving it even more of a horrifying and sickly appearance. It was covered in more scars than the rest of my body combined. Large and horrid from a mix of the shrapnel and the incisions made by the external fixation castings that had held my leg together until they could ship my ass back to the states. I remember that I couldn't help but think it looked like a horrific caricature of a puzzle that was missing some pieces while others were obviously forced to fit where they didn't belong.

As I took it all in the doctor's voice came through to me as though from a great distance, I could only make out some of what he was saying. Multiple surgeries, hours of physical therapy, partial paralysis, possible infection, worse comes to worse even amputation.

Amputation.

Like the sight of my leg I didn't feel much at the news, just a vague sense of despair at the edge of my numbness. The horror would come later. My vision was starting to go fuzzy, and with it my thoughts. She of the faux smile had apparently upped my meds. Staring at a bruise that was a particularly violent shade of purple, I couldn't help but make the morbid comparison to its similarity in color to the heart on the medal I had gotten. The medal awarded to me for having the incredible ability of being too dumb to die.

I could barely keep my eyes open; the meds were doing their work. Closing my eyes was a lot easier than opening them. The horror would come later, now is the time for sleep.

Lieutenant-Commander Arizona Robbins signing out.


End file.
